who, on the morning of the battle of Edge Hill, was unconcernedly strolling with his dogs between the two armies. What concern had the war with him whose life as lord of his lands was self-contained and complete ?

So Penn, we may infer, was born as peacefully as children usually are in a house where his father and mother had lodgings, and which stood in London in a little court close to the Tower and adjoining what was called London Wall. His father had gone to sea, and soon the mother and her son left London and went to live in the pretty village of Wanstead, near Essex, and there Penn passed his boyhood and went to school.

III

ADMIRAL PENN

OF Penn's mother very little is known, except that she was a Dutch woman, the daughter of John Jasper, a merchant of Rotterdam. Her son has left us no description of her. There is no portrait, no anecdotes or sayings, nothing that would reveal her character; and very likely she was a plain, mediocre person; for if she had been otherwise, something more definite about her would have come down

to us.

Penn showed few if any Dutch traits. We might expect that his mother would have given him some of the thrifty, economical qualities of her nation. But he was just the reverse, a lavish spender of money rather than a saver, and a very poor business man, so far as regards details and management. His ideas of such subjects were grand, general, and sweeping like an Englishman's, in advance of his time and greater than his ability could accomplish. It might be said that his very earnest and advanced opinions on the subject of religious liberty were Dutch; but he might have gained such opinions from the Quakers, who supported them more ardently than any other sect.

Pepys describes in his diary, in his amusing way,

his first meeting Lady Penn in August, 1664, and her appearance.

"At noon dined at home and after dinner my wife and I to Sir W Pen's to see his lady, the first time, who is a well looked, fat short old Dutch woman, but one that hath been heretofore pretty handsome, and is now very discreet and I believe hath more wit than her husband. Here we stayed talking a good while and very well pleased I was with the old woman at first visit." (Vol. iv. p. 207.)

In another passage he describes Lady Penn and some of the manners of the times when people visited one another in their bedrooms.

"So home vexed and going to my Lady Batten's there found a great many women with her in her chamber merry, my Lady Pen and her daughter, among others; where my Lady Pen flung me down upon the bed, and herself and others, one after another, upon me, and very merry we were.” (Vol. iv. pp. 391, 392.)

Later on Pepys describes her as "mighty homely and looks old." She was sufficiently good-looking, however, for him to make love to her.

She and her husband were, no doubt, plain people, and when they married were in moderate circumstances. The biographers describe Penn's birthplace near the Tower, as if his parents occupied the whole house; but it seems they only lodged there. Pepys, who for many years associated with them very intimately, gives us an account of their beginnings; but he obtained it from a certain Mrs. Turner, who was evidently an atrocious gossip.

“She [Mrs. Turner] says that he was a pityfull [fellow] when she first knew them; that his lady was one of the sourest, dirty women, that ever she saw; that they took two chambers, one over another, for themselves and child in Tower Hill; that for many years together

they eat more meals at her house than at their own that she brought my lady who then was a dirty slattern with her stockings hanging about her heels so that afterwards the people of the whole Hill did say that Mrs Turner had made Mrs Pen a gentlewoman." (Vol. vi. p. 329.)

But after making full allowances for Mrs. Turner, we can readily understand that there was a foundation of truth for what she said. Admiral Penn also, though of a respectable family, was a rough man. He was brought up as a sailor, and at the time he married and took lodgings near the Tower he had only lately come out of the merchant service, a very rough and brutal school. Lord Clarendon, as we shall see, described him as a man who was always trying to put on the appearance of good breeding, and not always with success. His whole career shows that, starting with almost nothing, he had a consuming ambition to make a fortune and get into good society without being over-scrupulous as to the means he used.

He is described on his tomb as descended from the Penns of Penns-Lodge, in the County of Wilts, and also from the Penns of Penn, in the County of Bucks. The family had apparently lived in those places from time immemorial, and that is all we know about them with any certainty. One of the ancestors is said to have been a monk in the Abbey of Glastonbury, in Somersetshire. When the monasteries were dissolved in the beginning of the reformation by Henry VIII., this monk was granted some of the Abbey lands, where he established Penns-Lodge, married, and had several children. It is possible

that from this man William Penn may have inherited his strong religious inclinations.

Several traditions attempt to trace back still farther the family history. Penn himself believed that he was of Welsh origin; and according to Watson's "Annals of Pennsylvania," * the Rev. Hugh David, who went to Philadelphia in 1700, relates that he and Penn were on the ship together, when Penn, seeing a goat gnawing a broom, said,

'Hugh, dost thou observe that goat? See what hardy fellows the Welsh are, how they can feed on a broom. However, Hugh, I am a Welshman myself, and will relate by how strange a circumstance our family lost their name. My grandfather (or great-grandfather) was named John Tudor, and lived upon the top of a hill or mountain in Wales; he was generally called John Penmunrith which in English is 'John on the top of a hill.' He removed from Wales into Ireland, where he acquired considerable property. Upon his return into his own country, he was addressed by his old friends and neighbors, not in the former way, but by the name of Mr. Penn. He afterwards removed to London, where he continued to reside under the name of John Penn, which has since been the family name."

Some of the details of this statement are not consistent with the rest of the family history; and in a letter written by Penn's son, John Penn, to the Rev. Dr. Smith, of Philadelphia, still another origin is suggested. It seems some woman in France named De Penn, or possibly De la Penne, had written to the Penns in England, claiming relationship with them. Some of her family, she said, had gone to England with William the Conqueror. This origin, seeming to be more flattering to the family pride, has been adopted by some writers; but there is no

*Vol. i. p. 119.